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  CARNIVORES

  RICHARD POCHE

  Copyright © 2015 Richard Poche

  All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER 1

  A big noisy wind hit the squad car, full of the chill from the Bay waters.

  Danny Lopez, rookie cop, hoped the cold weather would keep the gangbangers off the streets. But he looked over at the cop assigned to mentor him and knew that his training period would be trial by fire.

  Officer Mark Spinks claimed to be a cousin of the famous boxing Spinks brothers, and most of his fellow cops did not bother to question the assertion. If they did, they would have found out that Mark just really loved to bullshit people.

  But as the saying goes, you can't bullshit a bullshitter. Spinks had a unique talent for chipping away at a perpetrator's story. No one lied to Spinks and got away with it because he had the best BS detector on the force.

  Spinks offered no quarter to criminals and considered himself to be in a war. He was in a one-man fight against crime at forty-five years of age, but he looked sixty. He had bags under dark eyes with scar tissue running across both. People did take him to be an old prizefighter. Until they saw his potbelly.

  Lopez worried about not being macho enough to get good grades from Spinks. As a youth, Lopez had been a skinny nerd who locked himself in his room and read comic books. He stood at a five-foot-seven and had a thin, sharply cut face, green eyes, and brown hair that had started to thin. He never talked much and liked to think things through before offering an opinion. Even his own teachers teased him for being “quiet” and “shy.”

  But he did not see his silent nature as a weakness. He knew that there were elements that had to be met with violence and a quiet nature was neither here nor there when he came to dealing with a lawbreaker.

  Lopez discovered martial arts during junior year in high school. He studied different techniques that enabled smaller men to subdue bigger ones. He became an expert in Brazilian jiu jitsu as well as studying such complex fighting styles as Preying Mantis Kung Fu and White Crane.

  During his interviews, he stated that he wanted to become a cop because he wanted to help out the victims.

  He cared about victims of bullying because he knew from experience how it felt. His shy and gentle nature made him prey for bullies throughout his life. Finally, he’d had enough. He'd studied enough martial arts and fought back.

  On one occasion, he confronted his bully and gave him the beat down in front of everyone at school.

  It was the greatest day of Danny Lopez's young life.

  After the schoolyard victory, everyone began calling him The Karate Kid. Ironically, Lopez did resemble Ralph Macchio, the star of the movie. He looked brittle and weak. Now he had to spend the rest of his life proving otherwise.

  “This used to be a good neighborhood, believe it or not,” Spinks said, driving through traffic with a rhythm that only an experienced cop could have. “Hell, my grandmother used to walk around to the corner store and back by herself. Now, you'd be a damn fool to do that. Bunch of wild animals out here.”

  Lopez nodded his head in agreement. The West Oakland neighborhood they patrolled did have nice homes. A lot of them were old Victorians. It presented a facade of a previous generation where hard work and pride still mattered.

  “It is the people that changed,” Spinks said. “No respect. They say it happened in the sixties. I don't know. Growing up in the eighties, we didn't tolerate the shit people do now. These kids look up to the damn drug dealer. They excuse that shit, you know? Saying that he is just trying to survive. But as cops, we know better. We know that these fuckers are just taking the easy way out. It’s easier to rob an old lady then get a damn job. Shit, man, I saw this YouTube video where this punk ass drop kicked a woman holding her baby just to steal her damn cell phone!”

  The patrol car cruised to the red light. Street lamps barely illuminated the dimly lit homes. Most had black bars on the windows. Across the way, an abandoned church had “Fuck the Police!” scrawled in black on its shuttered doors.

  Spinks noticed the corner liquor store with iron bars on its customer service window.

  “Can you believe that?” he asked. “How many places in America do you have a damn storefront where the shopkeeper looks like he's doing business in a prison cell? Ridiculous! Only in Oakland.”

  “I grew up here, too,” Lopez said. “I remember I used to go in there and buy football cards.”

  “Yep, yep. The one with the stick of gum inside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, see that's what I'm talking about. When I was a kid growing up here, it was all about fun and family and barbecues. Now this is all about bullshit. Bullshit and killings.”

  They watched as the man behind the window counter helped a young black woman with her son holding on to her leg.

  The boy looked across at the police, his eyes full of suspicion.

  Lopez waved at the boy and he hid his head behind his mother.

  “Do you need a bag?” the storeowner asked the woman.

  “Just give it here,” she said, taking the bottle of Hennessy.

  “Look at that shit,” Spinks said.

  The woman turned around and saw the squad car. She curled her lips in contempt as she walked off with a bottle of booze in one hand and her son's hand in the other.

  A homeless man walked past the car as they waited for the light. He started to dance, doing a little moonwalk a la Michael Jackson, but without the grace.

  “Let's go, man!” Spinks honked his horn.

  The homeless man pointed at the full moon that shined, fat and full. Then he howled like a wolf.

  “I drive through here and I feel like dealing with people from another planet,” Spinks said as he pulled the vehicle around the homeless man. “Hell, they make me want to fly to another planet.”

  Spinks dreamed of other existences, of being anywhere but in the ghetto as a patrol cop. His smartphone had pictures of exotic lands that he downloaded in his leisure time. Beaches, mostly. He wanted to spend the rest of his life island hopping, going from beach to beach, being entertained by the dark beauties of foreign lands. He told himself stories of what he would do if he were rich. It was a habit he had growing up in a poor family because that is what people do: talk and dream.

  The patrol car turned onto Mandela Parkway. A group of kids milled around the corner, laughing, cursing, and talking loudly. They saw the police car roll up and stopped laughing. Two of them looked away, but the tallest one gave the officer a dirty look from hell. He had eyes that were as black and deep as a pool of oil.

  “Look at this shit,” Spinks said. “You know, when I first started, I thought maybe I could be a positive influence to these little fucks. That maybe they could see the positivity in living the clean life. But now, no. Now I just watch destiny take its natural course because a dipshit is a dipshit.”

  Spinks stopped the patrol car and rolled down the window. He beamed his flashlight across their hardened faces.

  “Take your hoods and hats off,” he said. “Let me get a look at you.”

  “Why?” one of the teens asked.

  “Take the hoods off!”

  The teens stared hard. Then obliged the request.

  “Just hanging out, right?” Spinks asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Lemme guess, the Xbox is broken. Can't afford a new one so it’s back to the street corner slinging dope.”

  “Nah, it ain't like that.”

  “What's 'it' like then?” Spinks asked caustically.

  The dispatcher's voice came over the radio. Frantic.

  “All available units. Skyline Boulevard and 38th. All available units please respond to Skyline and 38th stat. Officer down. I repeat. Officer down.”

/>   Spinks hit the gas. The squad car raced up the street like a bullet.

  “Yeah, that's right, get the fuck outta here, punk ass cop,” one of the teens said as the officers drove off.

  Spinks said nothing on the drive over, his face a mask of determination. Lopez could feel his own adrenaline rise simply by looking over at his partner. This would be his first crisis situation, but nothing would be required of him here as a rookie. He was still in observer mode, but a tenseness still build up in his body.

  “Officer down.”

  The words resonated through his head.

  That could be him one day. He reached over and drank from his bottle of Pepsi. It didn't relieve his dry mouth at all; instead, the fuzz of bubbles remained caught in his throat.

  They raced up the Oakland Hills with the sirens blaring. For a second, Lopez felt like he was in a war zone. The sirens, the police cars, and the helicopters overhead.

  Spinks pulled up and the blue lights from all of the squad cars gave the entire block a disco-strobe effect.

  “The fuck is going on?” Spinks asked as he exited the vehicle.

  Lopez followed just a half-step behind. They continued walking toward the circle of people surrounding a body. As they approached, they noticed the chunks of flesh strewn on the ground. A surreal sight, as if someone had taken freshly cut meat from the butcher and scattered it randomly on the street.

  The body itself almost made Lopez retch. A pile of intestines crowned atop limbs wearing black clothing and a puddle of blood.

  “No press!” Captain Gary Nixon called out to everyone. “No press!”

  Nixon resembled a Bulgarian power lifter. He had a brusque demeanor to match and barked out orders as if he had been raised in an Eastern European police state.

  He saw Spinks and waved him over. Lopez followed.

  “You ever see those police interviews where they say they've 'never seen anything like it'?”

  Spinks nodded his head slightly to the Captain's grating voice.

  “This is one of those times.”

  “Who?” Spinks crouched down to take a closer look at the body.

  “John Laguardia.”

  The crime scene photographer snapped pictures of the brutal scene. The flashing light from his camera showcased what remained of the man's face. His throat had been ripped open through his mouth, which now gaped open. His face contorted into an expression of agony so severe it remained even in death.

  Lopez had to avert his eyes.

  “Don't look away,” Spinks said. “This is it. This is the reality I was talking about.”

  Lopez didn't respond. He just looked down again and saw the light from the camera flash on the police badge on the ground.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pastor James Kosmovich took the pulpit with his brow furrowed. His face bore the expression of a man who held many deep and troubled thoughts within.

  He looked across at his congregation. Some bowed their heads not out of reverence, but of fear of meeting his eyes.

  Eyes that presumed guilt.

  “I had hope when I was a young man,” he declared. “Hope that my generation could make the world a better place. That hope rose as I was given this church to lead and protect. But that hope died away over time. My heart withered away as I witnessed tragedy after tragedy.

  “A lot of pastors have turned a blind eye to the moral decay that has taken root across our nation. We thought it was bad in 1990. Then it got worse in 2000. But now…now is the worse it has ever been. Abortions. All-time high. Crime. All-time high. Police killings. All-time high.”

  The pastor paused for dramatic effect, looking across at a lot of empty seats. “Faith. All-time low.”

  A crew of senior women sat in the front row. Pastor “K”, as most of those familiar called him, privately nicknamed them the “Golden Girls”, a reference not only to the old television show but also to their sizable tithes to his church.

  Make no mistake, they were the ones that kept his show afloat. So he appealed to their traditional sensibilities with his own brand of charisma thrown in.

  “But what can we do? Should we pray about it?”

  Pastor K went into a mock prayer with his hands clasped together.

  “Or are we going to fucking do something about it?”

  He pounded on the pulpit with his fist.

  “It is about time we got angry around here. Wasn't Jesus angry when he kicked out the moneychangers? Since when has it not become okay to get angry? Are Christians just people who don't curse?”

  Pastor K kicked the pulpit down.

  The congregation gasped as the wood bounced across the stage.

  “Last week, one of our parishioners was murdered. An officer of the law. And a man of God and of this church. Killed because he was a cop. A man trying to restore order in a world gone mad. Killed by the city that he swore to protect and serve.”

  Pastor K paused again. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  Taking a deep breath, he began kicking the fallen pulpit. “To protect and serve what?”

  He heard the sound of people whispering in the back of the church, but Pastor K didn't care. He couldn't care less what the non-tithing people thought of him.

  “You're probably thinking I've lost it,” he continued. “What in the world is a preacher doing using foul language? Well, dammit, I'm angry. And I need to get your attention. If that means using a few curse words, so fucking be it. Jesus understands. Trust me. Because he died for us. Just like Officer John Laguardia died for us.”

  The wind picked up outside the church. Pastor K let the congregants listen to the rattling and chattering at the window for a few moments.

  Then he picked up the pulpit and placed at center stage once again, the frisson sound of wood scraping against wood filling the air.

  “I'm tired of people dying for me,” he said, looking up at a picture of Jesus.

  “Amen,” said one of the parishioners after a long silence.

  “We don't realize how much aura a person has until they are gone,” Pastor K continued. “When John was here, sitting with us, you could feel his presence. His integrity. His loyalty. His laughter and good nature. Think of how many laughs we will not have because he is gone. How many kind words that we and countless others will never receive. I, we, cannot lose someone like John without losing a piece of ourselves in the process. A piece of our hope. A piece of our future. Because his life resonated.”

  With a practiced gesture that looked spontaneous, Pastor K looked down at his shoes. Then he looked back over at his small congregation with tears sliding down his cheeks.

  “Guys like John are the rarest of rare. And now there is suddenly one less.”

  Pastor K stopped speaking for a few moments. He walked from one side of the stage to the other, appearing to gather his thoughts.

  “So we mourn our dead. Our heroes. But in the back of our mind, we know that there will come a time when we will think of them less and less until we reach a point where we don't think about them at all.”

  He turned around and looked up at the ten-foot cross in the back of the stage.

  “The toughest thing a person can do is change,” he said, his voice calming down. “We are dealing with wolves out there. So we have to change into wolves ourselves.”

  Pastor K cruised down San Pablo Avenue. Just don't get caught, he whispered to himself.

  He often wondered what drew him to a city like Oakland. He could have stayed in his native Illinois and preached to nice mid-western families. He could have been treated to a life of tranquility and gentle happiness that people in West Oakland only saw on television. But something about the inner city drew him in: its darkness.

  He liked the fact that the only people around at this hour were the gangbangers and the cops.

  But he only feared the cops.

  The gangbangers would understand his appetite.

  He also liked Oakland because of t
he Latina population. His preference for young Mexican girls could be satiated here as long as he remained discreet.

  That is why he liked Lita. She understood discretion.

  He figured her to be around twenty years old. There were prettier girls than Lita around the area, but Lita had that smile. Real and refreshing. Like she really liked him. She was a girl who accepted her lot in life and didn't mind having sex with a pot-bellied man thirty years her senior.

  Because he needed sex, and that sex had to be without judgment.

  Pastor K texted Lita early that evening and said to meet him on the corner of 38th and San Pablo. His modus operandi was to drive up and get a burrito from La Piñata, the restaurant across the way. Lita would hop in the car and he would drive to a dark lot where she would suck him off.

  Pastor K drove around the block several times until,he saw a petite Hispanic girl that he thought might be Lita. She turned around and approached his slowing vehicle.

  “Have you seen Lita?” he asked.

  “Why have Lita when you can have the best?” the girl asked in a heavy accent.

  The Pastor took that as a 'no' and drove off with a chuckle. He went a half block down then parked. Looking down at the luminous glow of his cell phone, he texted Lita again. “Where r u?”

  “Meet me in the park,” came the reply.

  “The park?” he texted back.

  Pastor K became suspicious. “Why?” texted. “Come to the car.”

  “Something different,” came the response. She attached a selfie of her cleavage. It was a dark and blurry photo, but it was unmistakably her. He recognized the black beauty mark atop her left breast.

  Heavy-set with a big booty and an ample bosom, Lita would not pass for a fitness model. But she did not have too much jiggle. Pastor K often called her Rubenesque, but she did not know what that word meant.

  His mouth grew dry in anticipation and he felt his heartbeat start to rise. He recognized his lust as an addiction but didn't care. He thought about her sweet mouth caressing his shaft with her tongue. Her every lick would give his body a feeling of static electricity, which would explode when she would look up at him and smile at just the right moment.